Charlie Bumpers vs. the Squeaking Skull

by Bill Harley

  CHARLIE BUMPERS VS.

  THE SQUEAKING SKULL

  Bill Harley

  Illustrated by Adam Gustavson

  Published by

  PEACHTREE PUBLISHERS

  1700 Chattahoochee Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112

  www.peachtree-online.com

  Text © 2014 by Bill Harley

  Illustrations © 2014 by Adam Gustavson

  First trade paperback edition published in 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Design by Nicola Simmonds Carmack

  Composition by Melanie McMahon Ives

  The illustrations were rendered in India ink and watercolor.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harley, Bill, 1954-

  Charlie Bumpers vs. the Squeaking Skull / by Bill Harley ; illustrated by Adam Gustavson.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-56145-765-6 (ebook)

  Summary: As Halloween nears, Charlie and Tommy hope to get out of taking their little sisters trick-or-treating and go by themselves to Alex’s upscale neighborhood instead, then attend a sleepover at Alex’s house, but when Charlie learns that partygoers will be watching a very scary horror movie he panics.

  [1. Halloween—Fiction. 2. Fear—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Behavior—Fiction. 5. Family life—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.] I. Gustavson, Adam, illustrator. II. Title. III. Title: Charlie Bumpers versus the Squeaking Skull.

  PZ7.H22655Crv 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014006497

  To my dad, Max Harley

  Thanks to Jane Murphy, for her continued careful reading and acute insight

  Contents

  1—Tons of Candy

  2—Maybe I Am a Dorky Chicken

  3—Trickier Than I’d Thought

  4—Good It’s Not a Goat

  5—Watch Out for the Goatsucker!

  6—Don’t Say That!

  7—The Squeaking Skull

  8—Umbrellas and Vampires

  9—The Long-Fingered Man

  10—Completely Creepy

  11—She Loves Weird Stuff

  12—Don’t Tell Anyone

  13—One Serious Bat

  14—The Final, Ultimate De-scaring of Charlie Bumpers

  15—Some Kind of Evil Plan

  16—Bats Don’t Need to Shave

  17—You Have to Have a Hairy Face

  18—Are You Allowed to Strangle Your Little Sister?

  19—Maldore, Deliverer of Justice

  20—Hairy Rabid Bat!

  21—Teeny Tiny Candy Bars

  22—Your Dumb Squeaking Skull

  23—The Attack of the Chupacabra

  24—The Squid Delivers

  1

  Tons of Candy

  “What are you wearing for Halloween?” Tommy yelled over the noise in the gym.

  “I don’t know,” I said. There were only twelve days to Halloween, and I hadn’t decided what I wanted to be.

  Tommy Kasten’s my best friend. We were leaning against the gym wall during recess, since it was raining too hard to go outside. There were two different kickball games going, a basketball game, and some kids skipping rope. With everyone yelling and screaming, Tommy and I could barely hear ourselves think. For a few minutes we watched everyone else run around.

  Mr. Shuler, our gym teacher, was watching, too. I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t like all these kids crowded into his gym.

  “Maybe I’ll go as Mr. Shuler,” I said. “That would be scary.”

  “Ha!” Tommy snorted. “I’m going as a werewolf. I’ve got some fangs to put in my mouth, and I’m going to glue hair all over my hands and face.”

  “Your mom’s going to let you glue hair on yourself?” I asked.

  “I hope so,” Tommy said.

  “That’ll be great. I can’t think of anything good to be this year.”

  “Well, you’d better figure something out pretty soon,” he said. “Don’t forget about the costume contest. The winner gets ten free movie tickets.”

  “I know.” There was going to be a costume contest at school, and I wanted to win. Then Tommy and I could go to the movies five times together. Or maybe I would take someone else, too. Like Hector, who sits next to me in Mrs. Burke’s fourth-grade class.

  “Want to come to my house for trick-or-treating?” I asked.

  “If I do, I’ll have to bring Carla,” Tommy said.

  Carla is Tommy’s little sister. She’s in first grade, just like my sister Mabel, and they’re best friends, too. My dad calls Mabel “Squirt,” but I call her “the Squid” because it’s funnier.

  “I know,” I said. “I always have to take the Squid around. We could do it together.”

  “I guess,” Tommy said. “The only problem is Carla slows me down. I can never get to as many houses as I want. And when Mom or Dad comes with us, they stop and talk to the grown-ups handing out the candy. It’s worse than going to the supermarket with them. It takes forever.”

  “Exactly!” I agreed.

  “It’s too bad we can’t go by ourselves,” Tommy said.

  “And it’s too bad we can’t go to a neighborhood where the houses are really big and everyone hands out huge candy bars.”

  “Right!” said Tommy, getting more excited. “The bigger the houses, the bigger the candy bars! Then maybe we’d have to carry extra bags for when the first ones got filled up. That would be stupendous.”

  “Terrific!” I said.

  “Stupific!” Tommy said.

  “Stupific!” I repeated. “That’s hilarious.”

  “Stupific!” we both crowed at the same time.

  “Wait!” Tommy said. “Maybe your brother Matt could take Carla and Mabel around, and we could go to a different neighborhood by ourselves!”

  “Maybe,” I said. But I wondered if Matt would really take two first graders out trick-or-treating. Anyway, the Squid usually wanted to do things with me.

  “Hey!” Alex MacLeod ran up, bouncing a ball a million miles an hour. He’s a nice guy, but hyper—very, very hyper.

  “What are you guys doing for Halloween?” Alex asked, still bouncing.

  “Trick-or-treating,” Tommy said. “Duh.”

  Alex lost the ball and ran to retrieve it. When he bounced it back our way, I caught it and held on to it. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “You wanna come to my house?” he asked. “I’m going to have a sleepover. We’ll go out trick-or-treating in my neighborhood, then watch movies. It’ll be great.”

  Tommy and I looked at each other. A dream come true. We knew where Alex lived—his house was really big, and his neighborhood was full of other big houses. Every one of them was probably loaded with giant candy bars.

  Carla and Mabel the Squid wouldn’t be there. Tons of candy! Heaven on earth on Halloween!

  Tommy and I smiled at each other.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How many bags should we bring?” Tommy asked.

  “As many as you want,” Alex said. “It’s going to be awesome. And I’m going to get some horror movies.”

  “I love scary movies,” Tommy said.

  “I hope we can get The Shrieking Skull,” Alex said. “It’s the scariest horror movie ever!”

  “Fantastic!” Tommy said.

  “Ask your parents if you can come,” Alex said. “We’ll eat candy and pizza until we
throw up, and then watch scary movies and scream like crazy.”

  “Stupific!” Tommy said.

  “Super stupific,” I said.

  Halloween with friends. Lots of candy. All of it was really stupific.

  Except for one thing.

  I HATE horror movies.

  2

  Maybe I Am a Dorky Chicken

  I know I’m supposed to like scary movies—everyone talks about how great they are—but I don’t.

  One Friday night when I was in second grade, Matt talked our mom into letting us watch a scary movie together as a family. The Squid was only four and was already in bed. My dad wasn’t really paying attention, and he fell asleep on the couch (as usual) right after the movie started.

  The phone rang and my mom left the room to talk, and then it was just Matt and me watching the movie.

  I was doing okay until this really creepy-looking guy started up the stairs to where the kids were all having a sleepover. The kids were acting like bozos and making a lot of noise, so they didn’t hear him moaning outside their door. “I don’t like this,” I whispered to Matt.

  “Shhhh,” said Matt. “This is the best part.”

  “Does something bad happen?” I asked.

  “Just be quiet and watch!”

  I was getting really nervous. I wanted to tell the kids in the movie that something awful was going to happen. But they were laughing and acting like there was no such thing as a creepy-looking guy who wanted to get them all.

  Like I said, they were bozos.

  “I don’t want to see this,” I said.

  “Shhhh!” Matt said again.

  I squinched my eyes almost shut and hugged my pillow to my chest.

  “Watch!” Matt said. “Don’t be such a chicken!”

  So I watched. I wished I hadn’t.

  When the creepy-looking guy’s ax chopped through the door, I screamed so loud that Mom came back.

  She turned off the movie and told us to go to bed. Matt complained that he should be allowed to watch the rest of it, but Mom said she didn’t like us watching that kind of horror stuff and she didn’t know why she even let Matt choose the movie to begin with.

  Then Dad woke up and grumbled, “Everybody go to bed.”

  I was relieved. But Matt was disgusted. “Dorky chicken,” he grumbled at me as we headed upstairs.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I am a dorky chicken.

  I can’t help it. I just don’t like scary movies.

  I really wanted to go to Alex’s on Halloween to be with my friends.

  But not with The Shrieking Skull.

  3

  Trickier Than I’d Thought

  When I got home from school, I took our dog, Ginger, on her walk. After that I sat at the kitchen table and made myself some peanut butter and crackers.

  The Squid came running in. “Guess what, Charlie?” she asked. “It’s almost Halloween! I can’t wait!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Halloween with her. Not until I’d talked to Mom about going to Alex’s.

  “Aren’t you excited?” she asked. “What’s your costume? Have you even decided?” Sometimes the Squid just keeps asking questions. Once, when she was four, my dad counted how many questions she asked in a day. It was over five hundred.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

  “Will you go as a ghost?”

  “No,” I said. What a dumb idea.

  “What about a pumpkin?”

  “No!”

  “What about a giant bug?”

  “No, Mabel! Quit bugging me. You’re the one who should be a bug.”

  “I can’t be a bug,” the Squid said, stuffing a cracker into her mouth. “I’m going as a bunch of grapes. But you’d better think of a costume, or you can’t go trick-or-treating with me. Don’t you want to go with me?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “You have to,” she said. “It’s what we always do.”

  “We don’t always have to do it like that.”

  “What do you mean?” She gave me a suspicious look. Her mouth opened in a big O like she couldn’t believe what I’d just said. Cracker crumbs fell out of her mouth onto her shirt.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We won’t go out on Halloween together forever.”

  “We always go out together,” she protested. “It’s what we do.”

  I didn’t say anything. Suddenly I realized that going to Alex’s would be a lot trickier than I’d thought.

  My mom was going to ask what we’d be doing there. If I told her about the scary movie, she’d say it wasn’t a good idea.

  Matt would find out and then he’d tease me about being a dorky chicken.

  But worst of all, the Squid was going to be really upset about me not going with her. And then my parents would feel bad for her and make me feel bad, too.

  I was going to have to be very careful.

  After I finished my homework, I found my mom alone in the kitchen. She was cutting up some celery to put in the salad for dinner. It seemed like a good time to talk to her.

  “Mom,” I said, “do we always have to go trick-or-treating all together?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. She wasn’t really listening hard yet, which was good.

  “I mean I always have to go with Mabel.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” The chopping slowed down a little.

  I didn’t want Mom to listen too closely, because then she would start to ask questions.

  “Well, she’s kind of slow, so we can’t get around to as many houses as I want. And then when you or Dad come along, you talk to the grown-ups, and that slows us down even more.”

  She stopped cutting and looked up. Bad sign! I wished she would keep her mind mostly on the celery.

  “Charlie, what is it you want to do?” she asked.

  Uh-oh, I thought. Here goes. “I … um … I want to go with just my friends,” I muttered.

  Matt came into the kitchen. “Hey, when’s dinner?” he asked.

  “When the cook is done cooking,” Mom grumbled.

  I didn’t want to talk with Matt in the room. But Mom went right on with her questions. “So you want to go trick-or-treating with just Tommy?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “You can’t go with just Tommy,” Matt said. “You have to take Mabel.”

  “I always have to take Mabel,” I said.

  “That’s because you’re her older brother,” Matt explained, like he was a teacher or something.

  “So are you,” I complained. “Why don’t you take her?”

  “Because this year I’m in charge of candy distribution. Plus, I’m going to dress up like a ghoul and sit on the front porch and scare kids.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Matt said. “I’ll scare them so bad they’ll wet their pants.”

  “Matthew Bumpers!” Mom snapped. “You will not do that!”

  “But, Mom!” Matt protested. “You said I could.”

  “I said you could hand out candy. I did not say you could scare children.”

  “It’s Halloween!” Matt said. “The whole point of Halloween is to scare kids.”

  “What about me trick-or-treating with friends?” I asked.

  “Who else do you want to come over?” Mom asked.

  “Well—”

  Just as I started to answer, the Squid skipped into the kitchen.

  “—Alex invited me to come over to his house,” I finished.

  “And you would go trick-or-treating over there?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tommy’s going, too.”

  The Squid stopped and stared at me. “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Your big brother Charlie doesn’t want to go trick-or-treating with you,” Matt said.

  “What?” the Squid asked again. Her voice was getting higher and higher.

  “That’s not true,” Mom said.

&n
bsp; Just then, the back door opened. “Sorry I’m late,” Dad said.

  “Charlie isn’t going trick-or-treating with me!” the Squid squealed.

  “What else are you guys going to do at Alex’s?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to go.”

  “You’d better be careful, Charlie,” Matt warned. “I’ve heard there’s a crazy guy in Alex’s neighborhood who eats nine-year-olds.”

  “Matt!” Mom said.

  “Shut up, Matt!” I shouted.

  “Charlie!” Mom said.

  “I don’t want to go trick-or-treating by myself!” The Squid started to cry.

  “Mabel!” Mom said.

  “It’s nice to be home,” Dad said. “Is dinner ready?”

  “Charlie has to go out with me,” the Squid said as soon as we sat down at the dinner table.

  “Not yet! Not yet!” Dad said. “We’re not arguing about anything until I eat something.”

  So we all ate something and calmed down a little.

  Dad asked about our days, which he always does. When it was my turn, I decided to go for it. “Alex asked if I could come to his house for Halloween. Tommy and some other kids are going and I really want to go, too.”

  “Are Alex’s parents going out with him and his friends?” Mom asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Matt said.

  “I’ll call,” Mom said.

  “No! I mean, you don’t have to call,” I said.

  Having parents call each other is almost always a bad idea. They could find out more information than they need and then they might say no.

  “Fine,” said Dad. “I’ll call.”

  “No, Dad!” I said.

  He grinned. “Then Mom will call.”

  “Mom, please. I really want to go,” I said.

  “Who will I go with?” the Squid whined. “I can’t go by myself.”

  “Matt will take you,” Dad said.

  “Can’t. I have an important job to do,” said Matt. “I have to scare trick-or-treaters.”

  “What about me?” the Squid asked. She does not give up very easily. Like Dad says, my sister is persistent.

  “If Charlie isn’t here, then I’ll go with you,” Dad said.